Evictions are expected to slow sharply, housing analysts said, as state and national law enforcement officials shine a light on questionable foreclosure methods revealed by two of the country’s biggest home lenders in the last two weeks.
Even lenders with no known problems are expected to approach defaulting homeowners more cautiously and look more aggressively for resolutions short of outright eviction.
If there has been any fraud in the process, people should go to jail. What I don't get is why people who do not pay back the loans they took out should get to keep what they didn't own in the first place.
You buy a car with a loan, you do not own the car. You buy a house with a loan, you do not own the house. Pretty simple.
Just so we have this straight.. the government is trying to demolish the guaranteed retirement system, and old people's guaranteed medical system, for people like me who have dutifully paid into the system for decades.. but people who stop paying their mortgage get to keep their houses?
Do they think that all these people are suddenly going to start paying their mortgages? Do they think the economy is suddenly going to soar, and unemployment plunge, and people will suddenly have money?
Really?
Here's an idea. People on the margins read about how nobody is getting foreclosed on and just stop paying their mortgage and live in the house for free. Sound like a good idea?
So you have to wonder why the government wants to destroy Social Security and Medicare, but stop foreclosures. It's pretty simple. They want to reinflate the housing bubble because the CEO's 10 million dollar house is worth 3 million now. Lots and lots of pseduo-rich people are upside down on their McMansions and they desperately need the price to come back up so they can dump the property without going through a bankruptcy, or otherwise ruin their credit.. and lose an awful lot of money in the process.
It won't work, of course. Unemployment is going to hover around 10% for at least the next 5 years. If my dream of a tea bagger take over comes to fruition, it might last a lot longer. People just aren't going to have much money for anything other than essentials.
The correct course of action, of course, is for the government to spend many billions of dollars on new public works projects. Massive projects. We need a high speed rail network throughout the nation. We need local transportation improvements. We need new nuke plants and improved electrical grids. We need our highways and bridges fixed. We need gas pipelines repaired and upgraded.
We need the price of housing to settle at it's natural market values and you do that by foreclosing on everyone who isn't paying their mortgage, kick them out, and resell the house to somebody who will pay the mortgage. Yes, the prices of housing will fall due to excess surplus, which should demolish the new construction business - which is a good thing. Once prices have fallen to the price that people can afford, then they'll start inching up as they should naturally, but even that won't last that much longer.
I am quite sure that houses will become more like cars and depreciate over time, not appreciate. They won't depreciate the moment you move in like driving a car off the lot, but housing will depreciate over time due to technological innovation. Why would I want to live in a million dollar house built in 1970 when I can live in a million dollar house built in 2009? Have any idea how much better constructed the newer house is, and how much better the infrastructure of the house is? Which one is wire for CAT-5 for instance. Which one has the nearly air tight insulation? Which one has the media room, and communication systems? The list of improvements in home construction in the last 40 years is exceptionally long. Even a house built in 1990 is shit compared to one built last year.
I saw a teevee program that featured some old car from the 1930's. Apparently it's worth something like 5 million. You could buy a brand new Bugatti Veyron, and have 3 million left over for a brand new mansion. Why on earth would anybody buy a piece of shit 80 year old car when you can have a marvel of modern engineering for far less?
Shits fucked up. That is all.
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